Thanks to Henson Shaving for sponsoring today’s video.
In H.G. Wells’ novel “War of the Worlds,” Mars is the home of an advanced alien race.
These super-intelligent beings had access to giant robotic walkers which could stride
across the terrain with ease, blasting all in their path, intent on conquering our Earth.
Fortunately, our explorations of Mars have thus far not found any signs of hostile aliens
plotting world domination aboard giant walkers… but robotic walkers on Mars might not be a
thing of science fiction for much longer.
Not if NASA and Boston Dynamics have anything to do with it.
Thanks to these two organisations, walking robots on Mars could soon be a reality, and
they are already more advanced than you might think.
I’m Alex McColgan and you are watching Astrum.
Join with me today as we uncover the surprising advances that have been made in walking robotics,
and how through autonomous AI these robots could revolutionise our exploration and colonisation
of the Red Planet.
And remember – these advances have already been made.
But first, why is NASA interested in developing robots with legs?
If you have been keeping up with the sort of robots that scientists have been sending
to Mars, you will notice that they all have a fairly similar design.
Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, Perseverance – even the Zhurong rover deployed on Mars
by China earlier this year – are 6 wheeled rovers with large bodies (some over 2 metres
tall), carrying various kinds of scientific equipment and cameras.
This is because form follows function.
Wheels are an easy way to help a robot to get around on a flat surface, and a large
body allows for more scientific equipment to be carried.
However, wheels also come with downsides, in that they limit the kinds of places these
rovers can explore.
Spirit’s mission suffered a serious setback in 2009 when it got stuck in soft sand – a
trap it never escaped from.
Although scientists wanted to continue using it as a stationary platform to study the area
immediately around it, getting stuck was essentially the end of the mission for Spirit, especially
when it drained its battery trying to get out.
A similar thing happened to Opportunity in 2005, although fortunately in its case Opportunity
was able to escape from wheel-spinning after just over a month of being stuck.
However, there was also a point in the first year of Opportunity’s mission where it was
exploring Endurance Crater.
The exposed rock in the sides of this crater were ideal for answering questions about the
history of water on Mars.
Opportunity had limits on how steep a surface it could drive on (about 30 degrees), and
it was uncertain whether it could get out of the crater again if it drove into it.
In the end, scientists decided to send Opportunity into the crater anyway.
As it happened, Opportunity was able to drive out, and continued exploring Mars’ surface
for another 15 years.
But all that science wouldn’t have been possible if Opportunity’s wheels has meant
it couldn’t escape Endurance.
Now, compare that with this.
This robot, known as BigDog, was created by robotics company Boston Dynamics, a company
that makes some truly impressive robots.
You should check out their parkour robot, Atlas – a humanoid robot capable of running,
jumping, and climbing over obstacles in a way that feels almost human.
And you can really see the advantages that legs can offer in these kinds of situations.
BigDog could easily traverse powdery conditions, even up slopes, allowing it to explore a greater
range of areas in an environment like Mars.
However, it was a later version that caught NASA’s eye.
Meet Spot.
Spot is a walking robot originally designed for tasks on Earth, such as data collection
and mapping spaces for industry, or going into dangerous areas that humans can’t enter
(such as in areas that are heavily irradiated).
It’s able to carry weights of up to 14kg, and can perform repetitive tasks, and walk
up stairs, over gravel, and other uneven surfaces.
It comes with cameras that can see all around it, mapping the space.
If it falls over, it can self-right itself even from being completely upside down.
Unlike the rovers on Mars, which have top speeds of about 0.2kmph, Spot can travel at
around 5.8kmph.
But the cleverest part about it is its intelligent AI.
By using the information it sees in its cameras, Spot is able to create a 3D image in its onboard
computer, and can use that information to figure out the best way to travel over obstacles.
You don’t necessarily control it – instead you tell it where you want to go, and it figures
out for itself the best way to get there, actively avoiding obstacles if they present
themselves.
If it does start to fall, it can figure out what it needs to do to stop falling, and moves
its legs to arrest its fall in a way that almost feels alive.
It is this autonomy, mixed with Spot’s incredible range of versatility in movement, that makes
it ideal for exploration of other planets.
It’s not possible to directly control a robot on another planet - the distance is
so great that there would be a several minute lag between a scientist sending a signal,
and the robot taking an action.
So a lot of decision-making needs to be done by a robot on location.
This is true of the rovers NASA has sent to Mars already, like Spirit and Opportunity.
However, Spot can take this to another level.
Thanks to a collaboration with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Spot is proving to
be capable of working with a series of other robots to explore Martian-analogue caves here
on earth, completely independently of humans.
They are exploring the whole layout on their own, choosing their path, walking over obstacles.
They can handle pitch black lighting conditions, smoke, dust, and even water.
They can recognise points of scientific interest and investigate them.
One area of Mars and the Moon that NASA would like to explore in future are caves.
Caves are scientifically interesting for several reasons – they allow scientists to see deep
into the geology of a planet without needing to do any drilling (a difficult process),
helping them tell what the structure is like, or whether water was ever present.
They are sheltered ecosystems – while things on the surface might be eroded over time by
wind or cosmic radiation, caves offer shelter, preserving anything scientifically interesting
for us to find.
NASA’s BRAILLE program is even interested in whether any bacteria might have survived
in such an environment on Mars, or at least if their remains might be there [author’s
note: you can see in the last link I sent a clip where a spot is taking a swab of a
wall.
This is one of the things they’re looking for there].
Finally, this shelter and protection from radiation also make them a good location for
future human colonisation, making it all the more important for us to map them out for
any future human missions.
Currently, we struggle to explore caves on other planets.
Taking photos from space only really tells us information about maybe the entry way – scientists
can’t currently map cave structures from orbit.
Rovers like Opportunity would struggle to explore such a cave, as the ground would probably
not be very flat, the passageway might become too narrow for a 2m wide robot, and the terrain
would be uncertain.
And perhaps worst of all, signal to Earth would quickly become blocked by all that rock,
meaning a robot that requires any human input would not get very far.
In other words, a robot that was sent to explore a cave on Mars would need to be able to go
in and explore the entire thing on its own, with no prior knowledge of what the terrain
might look like in there.
It would need to see and map the terrain, decide how to move around it, and finally
bring that information back out to the surface.
And this is what NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Boston Dynamics are currently doing.
By combining NeBula, an advanced decision-making AI, with the versatile platform of Spot, NASA
is hoping to one day be able to send several of these robots to a cave on Mars or the Moon
and have them go in and map it, independently organising themselves by working as a group,
using cameras, robotic arms, and scientific equipment to identify objects of scientific
interest, relaying that information to each other, and then sending in the robot carrying
the right equipment to further study and photograph the object of interest.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Boston Dynamics are part of a team called Team CoStar,
and are taking part in the DARPA Subterranean Challenge.
This competition pits cutting edge robots and teams across the globe to practice at
exactly this kind of task – to enter tunnels, caves, and underground urban environments
and to explore and map them, possibly finding things of interest or “disaster victims,”
for later search, rescue, and discovery.
The final is taking place at the end of September 2021.
If Team CoStar win, it would be an excellent sign that their robotic-walkers were entirely
capable of doing everything that would need to be done on a real space mission.
There is currently no set date when Spot would be ready to explore the Moon or Mars – this
is still in the testing phase.
However, this technology offers a tantalising possibility.
One day, rather than Martians sending robotic walkers to Earth to help them colonise it,
it might be us sending robots to help us colonise there.
So, there we have it.
Are there robotic walkers on Mars?
Not yet, but there soon may well be.
The machines that make the parts for robotics and spacecraft have to produce the parts with
incredibly tight tolerances.
If the parts aren’t produced right, they could fail or not operate as intended.
Interestingly, today’s sponsor, Henson Shaving, actually uses aerospace machines to produce
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Why?
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Henson’s razors, on the other hand, only expose the blade by 27 microns.
I was actually really impressed with this product, using it gave a really smooth shave,
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The razor uses simple recyclable blades, and they are really cheap, meaning once your have
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I really recommend checking out their website in the description below, and the first 100
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Thanks for watching!
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If that is something you’d be interested in, check the links in the description.
All the best, and see you next time.